


if my love could keep you alive

by celeste9



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Letters, Mother-Son Relationship, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 17:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14024757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Poe receives a letter from his mother every year on his birthday until he’s twenty. The letter on his twentieth birthday is also accompanied by a small package, sent from Yavin 4.





	if my love could keep you alive

**Author's Note:**

> For Poe Dameron Appreciation Week Day 2: Space Family
> 
> Thanks to perlaret and theliterator for reading this for me, and the title is from Vienna Teng. Please enjoy my excessive Dameron family feels. <3

The ring is shiny on his mother’s finger, catching the sunlight. Poe touches it, and she smiles at him.

“Pretty,” he says, and his mother kisses the top of his head.

-

His mother smells like leather and engine oil and fresh earth; her scent becomes synonymous with safety and home. She lets him help her make repairs to her ship and the family speeder and the droid they have for a few years, even when he is so small he can’t see unless she lifts him up and sets him on the table where she works or on the side of the ship.

She points out parts and tells Poe the names of them and what their functions are; there is grease smeared on her cheek and Poe thinks she is the most beautiful woman who ever lived.

-

When Poe is five he falls from a tree and breaks his arm. He cries and his mother comes running; she scoops him up and strokes his face, and it makes Poe feel just a little better.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” she says, and doesn’t let go; Poe’s father has to fly the speeder to the medcenter.

She tells him he’s being so brave and strong and Poe chokes back his tears; he wants nothing better than for her to be proud of him.

-

Poe begs her to take him flying, every day, all the time; Poe’s father laughs and says she should have known better.

His mother rolls her eyes and ruffles his hair but she takes him in the cockpit of her A-wing almost as much as Poe wants her to. He feels safe sitting in her lap with her hands firm on his, and the world stretches beneath them with no limits.

“I’m gonna be a pilot like you,” he says, and her smile is wide and warm.

-

He doesn’t understand what’s happening at first. His mother is tired all the time, and his father shushes him when he gets too rambunctious. Poe lies with her in bed and she strokes his hair, her ring resting over his heart.

Sometimes he hears his parents talking, murmuring to each other, like they don’t want him to hear. He knows something is wrong. Poe crawls into her bed when his mother sleeps and listens to the thudding of her heartbeat.

She reads him his favorite stories, and Poe tries to be good. He tries not to cause any trouble, though it’s hard. Trouble kind of finds him.

Once he finds his father crying on the steps outside and Poe sits next to him; his dad hugs him so tight and can’t quite stop crying.

-

His mother dies in the spring, a month before Poe’s ninth birthday. The ranch is crowded with beings, some Poe knows well and some he doesn’t. His grandparents come to stay for a while, and so does L’ulo. Princess Leia comes, her eyes so sad, with Captain Solo and Master Skywalker.

The house feels full and empty all at once, and Poe can’t sleep. The only place he can sleep is in the cockpit of his mother’s A-wing, where he spent so many of his most treasured hours. He misses her so much that it hurts, that it feels like his chest will burst, and he cries from how unfair it is.

His father finds him and doesn’t make him come inside; instead he strokes Poe’s hair and brings him blankets.

-

The first letter arrives when Poe’s mother has been dead for a month, and Poe is nine. Her familiar hand springs to life on the screen of his datapad and Poe’s eyes blur with tears so that he can’t even read it.

“She wrote them for you,” his father says, sitting beside Poe on his bed, his hand on Poe’s back, “so she could be with you even after…” His voice shakes. “So you would always know how much she loves you.”

Dad reads the letter out loud and Poe can hear it in Mom’s voice; he sleeps with the datapad underneath his pillow and reads the letter every day, so many times he knows the words by heart.

-

Poe receives a letter from his mother every year on his birthday until he’s twenty. The letter on his twentieth birthday is also accompanied by a small package, sent from Yavin 4. He reads the letter in the quiet of his empty room at the Naval Academy.

_My darling Poe,_ it begins, just like they all did, and Poe can still imagine his mother’s voice reading it to him. _I can hardly imagine how you must look now, so grown. I wonder if your nose still has that cute bump on the end, if your hair still curls as wildly as mine, if your eyes are still as dark and warm as your father’s. I wonder how tall you are, how you style your hair, how you dress. I wonder if you still have that big smile, so easily given, and that joyful laugh. I hope you do._

_This will be my last letter to you, not because I love you any less, or because I think you shouldn’t still listen to your mother, but because I know that you will be someone I would be so proud of. I know that you will always follow your heart, and that you will always do what you think is right. I know that you will make mistakes, too, because Force knows I am still making them. But I know you, Poe, and I know your heart is so big and good, and I know you don’t need me to guide you because you have everything you need inside you. Your father is the best man I ever knew and I know that he will have taught you all that matters._

_I hope you know how much I love you, how much I always, always love you, and I will always be looking after you, even though I can’t be there with you. I remember so vividly when you were small, and your father and I had to leave you for the war; I held you in my arms and thought I couldn’t do it, I could never do it, I couldn’t let you go. I think I cried more than you did. You didn’t understand. You squeezed your tiny hand around my finger and it was the hardest thing I had ever done to hand you to my father and turn around._

_This is hard, too. You’re playing just outside the window, you and your little models, and the day is warm. I’m not sure you truly understand yet what is coming, and I think it’s better that way; I’m not sure I could bear it if you were unhappy._

_I realize now that as you read this letter, I have been gone from your life for longer than I was a part of it. All I ever wanted for you was for you to be safe, and happy, and to have everything that you want. I hope that you’re happy, Poe, and I hope that you will have all the love that you deserve. I hope that you have followed your dreams, and that you will always do so. Please know that though I can’t be near you, all my love is for you, as it has always been. You are the best part of my life and my only sadness is that I can’t be part of yours for longer._

_I am going to ask your father to keep something for you until you receive this letter; I hope that you will keep it as a reminder that I am always with you and that I wish for you to have all the best in your life. Please be happy, Poe, please be so, so happy._

_All my love, Mom_

He has to stop and start again several times, as his vision swims. When he reaches the end, he has to push the datapad aside and breathe for a few moments until he feels steady enough. When Poe tears open the wrapping of the tiny package, a ring spills out onto his palm. His mother’s wedding ring.

Poe closes his fist around it and cries until his tears run dry.

-

Poe acquires a chain and hangs his mother’s ring around his neck. He wears it every day and it becomes a comfort, the cool weight of it. It hangs against his heart when he flies and suddenly he is back in that cramped A-wing cockpit with his mother, sitting on her lap, feeling her hands on his, listening to her voice.

On Yavin 4 when Poe visits on holiday his father says, “She always wanted you to be happy and loved. It was her greatest wish that you would find someone who makes you happy, someone you could give it to.”

Dad touches the ring where it has slipped outside of Poe’s shirt; his eyes are wet.

“I miss her,” Poe says.

“I know,” Dad says.

-

When Poe graduates from the Naval Academy and earns his commission, the ring is around his neck, resting against his skin beneath his uniform. It makes him feel as though his mother is there to see him, even though it is only his father in the crowd. He hopes she is proud.

“I followed my dreams,” he says to himself. “I wanted to be just like you.”

He holds his hand over his chest and feels the shape of the ring beneath his palm.

-

Poe keeps busy and has relationships, but not many. He doesn’t think he is built for casual; he can give everything or nothing and if he is giving less than everything, well, what’s the point?

He loves, and sometimes is loved in return, but it always ends. The endings are hard, but Poe remains hopeful.

He hears his mother say, _Please be happy, Poe,_ and thinks that he is. He has his work, and his friends, and sometimes a partner, and one day he hopes he will have the partner that gives him the sort of love his parents had. He wants to love someone like that.

The ring continues to hang around his neck.

-

After he is twenty, there are no new letters. Poe reads the old ones over and over and over, and he thinks of his mother saying she knows he is someone she would be proud of, and that she knows he will always do what he thinks is right.

He tries. He thinks of her and he tries, and he tries, and he tries.

-

Poe acquires his astromech BB-8 when he is first stationed at the base on Mirrin Prime. The droid is an especially cheerful little orange and white model with what Poe might almost call skittishness, if it weren’t just a quirk of programming. Memory wipes didn’t seem to do much for it and Poe was advised against claiming him, told the droid wasn’t ideal for his purposes. Better off repurposed for parts, they said.

But Poe took to him, charmed quickly by the little guy, and after a few flights he is convinced they make a good pair.

He thinks his mother would have liked BB-8.

-

When Muran is killed, and the New Republic continues to do nothing, and Leia Organa tells him he is exactly the sort of person the Resistance needs, Poe thinks of his father, and he thinks of his mother. He thinks of them leaving him behind so they could fight for a better, safer galaxy, and he thinks of his father standing outside and looking up at the sky. He thinks of his mother choosing the difficult path and he thinks of her watching him through the window and writing him letters she would never live to see him read.

_I know that you will always follow your heart, and that you will always do what you think is right._

The decision is easy.

-

When Poe leaves for Jakku and Lor San Tekka, he puts _Black One_ in the care of his father. No one better to look after his ship and nowhere safer to set off from.

As Poe lifts up his helmet and BB-8 burbles cheerfully behind him, it isn’t that Poe has a bad feeling, but he… Poe tends not to get too worked up over missions. He knows his life is dangerous but he has faith in himself and his own abilities, and he has faith in those with him, even when there’s no one but BB-8. (Honestly, he never feels like he needs more than BB-8.) He knows this is a risky mission and he knows the First Order is gunning for exactly what Poe is.

Poe isn’t worried, or afraid. Things tend to work out.

(He believes that his mother does watch out for him.)

But something niggles at him. He fingers his mother’s ring.

He runs back to his dad, slipping the chain over his neck. Dad holds his hand out, surprised, but the gesture seeming almost reflexive. Poe drops the ring onto his palm.

“Keep it safe for me?”

“Of course, but--”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll see you soon; I’ll be collecting my ship and my ring.”

Poe feels strange when he settles into the cockpit of the unmarked X-wing he’s using for this mission, weirdly light. “Let’s go, buddy,” he says to BB-8, pushing all thoughts from his mind.

The sooner he goes, the sooner he will be back to reclaim everything that’s his and to bring Leia what she wants most.

-

Later, Poe won’t be able to stop himself from wondering if he jinxed himself, leaving behind the ring, or if he kept it safe by not wearing it when he was captured.

-

Jakku is kriffing terrible. Poe charms his way into a ride back to Yavin 4 and Dad presses the ring back into Poe’s hand. He says, “Damn, Poe. She’d be mad as hell at you for getting yourself into such a mess.”

Poe smiles crookedly. “Yeah, I know. But I like to think I’ve done her proud.”

His dad’s hug is strong and firm. “She’d be so, so proud of you, when she wasn’t kicking your ass. Same as me.”

Poe closes his eyes and holds on.

-

He is wearing the ring when Starkiller Base explodes behind him, and he is wearing it when they are forced to evacuate the base on D’Qar. He is wearing it when he watches their last bomber take out a dreadnought, and he is wearing it when Leia Organa knocks him back down to captain. He wears it when his ship burns alongside his friends and he wears it when Leia lies unconscious, when an admiral he has never met takes command and when Finn tells him he has a crazy plan.

A pilot doesn’t have time for hesitation or doubt. That’s what gets you killed. Poe has never doubted himself in the field.

_I know that you will always follow your heart, and that you will always do what you think is right._

Poe doesn’t know what Leia would do, and she is not here to tell him. Poe doesn’t know what his mother would do, either, and it has been more than two decades since Poe has seen her face outside a holo.

He rubs the ring between his fingers and hears his mother’s voice in his head; he can only do what he believes in. It’s what he has always done.

_I know that you will make mistakes, too, because Force knows I’m still making them._

If Poe makes a mistake, it will be in doing the only thing he can. Trusting himself, trusting the Resistance, and doing whatever it takes to keep going. He cannot hesitate and he cannot doubt; he can only move forward and do what he thinks is right.

He hopes his mother would still have reason to be proud of him.

-

“Got into trouble without you, buddy,” Poe says to BB-8 when they sit in the _Millennium Falcon_ , hand on his little round body, and BB-8 beeps in commiseration.

_[Me too,]_ the droid says, and Poe laughs for the first time in what feels like weeks.

-

After Crait, Leia takes them to Yavin 4. It will be for a few days only, just to find their feet, and it’s dangerous, it’s so dangerous. Poe is afraid for his father, housing them, but he needs to see him so badly that it almost feels worth it.

Poe is the first one off the _Millennium Falcon_ and he runs straight to his father, engulfing him in a hug. He almost wants to cry but he won’t, he won’t cry, he is a grown man and he won’t –

“Poe,” Dad says, “Poe, you have to stop doing this to me. Think of my old heart.”

“Thought you might hit me,” Poe says, and Dad laughs, but there’s a sniffle in it, like he is close to crying, too.

“Maybe later.”

-

Poe’s datapad blew up with everything else on the _Raddus,_ his mother’s letters with it. He has them on a back-up chip in his childhood bedroom and he loads them onto an old datapad and goes outside. The sky is darkened as evening falls and the ranch is crowded, but Poe goes up alone to the Force tree, climbing up to a big sturdy branch where he can rest his back, one leg hanging down.

He reads every letter through, then once more over, and then again. _My darling Poe,_ they all begin.

When he is ten, his mother writes, _Are you keeping up with your flying? Do you still take to the air with such joy? I hope you never lose that._

When he is fourteen, his mother writes, _Please take pity on your father; I remember what I was like at your age. He doesn’t have any back-up._

When he is seventeen, his mother writes, _Have you had your first kiss, your first love, your first heartbreak? If I were there I would tell you to always keep your heart open, even when it hurts, even when you’re afraid._

And when he is twenty, his mother writes, _I know that you will be someone I would be so proud of._

Poe pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Poe?”

Poe wipes the back of his hand across his eyes and looks down. “Yeah, Dad?”

“I’m too old to be climbing up there. Will you come down for a minute?”

Poe stuffs the datapad into his jacket and swings down. He and his father sit in the dirt, shoulders pressed together, backs against the trunk. BB-8 is whirling around some distance away, while Rey laughs at him and Finn laughs at them both. Poe is glad they have something to smile about; they deserve some happiness.

In the quiet Dad says, “Are you gonna talk to me, Poe?”

It takes a moment for Poe to be able to say, “I got so many of them killed, Dad.”

His father’s hand feels warm and steady on his knee. “Seems like you saved a lot of them, too. Leia says you led them out.”

Poe has tried to think like that. He knows how close they came to losing everything on Crait. He knows that if that dreadnought had been tracking them through hyperspace, they would almost certainly all be dead right now. He doesn’t regret what he did or the choice he made under pressure, and he knows that he can’t ever start second-guessing himself like that.

But he regrets the lives lost and he will never forget how knowing he had disappointed Leia made him feel.

“She said I would make her proud,” Poe says, and he hates how his voice cracks. “But I don’t know--”

“Poe,” Dad says, squeezing his leg. “Poe, she never thought you would be perfect. No one is. She would be so, so proud of the man you are, a man who puts others before himself, who fights so fiercely for what’s right, who can feel such sorrow for wartime decisions. I know because I’m proud of you.”

Poe can’t make himself say anything; the words feel choked-off in his throat. He grips the ring, still hanging around his neck, and he leans his head against his father.

Dad slides his arm behind Poe’s back, looping it around his shoulders, and they sit like that until it grows too dark to see.

-

Poe brings the datapad with the letters from his mother on it with him when he leaves Yavin 4. He reads them while Chewbacca pilots the _Falcon_ through hyperspace, and he reads them when they settle on a new base.

The war is long, and hard, and there is always work to be done. The general relies on him and he tries not to let her down. He tries not to let his mother down.

He keeps her ring like a good luck charm, a ward against the dark, and it makes him feel like she is always there, just beyond his sight. When death scrapes just a little too close for comfort, he imagines that it was her hand guiding him to safety.

He loses more friends, old ones and new ones, and he loses beings in his command. He knows all his mother’s letters by heart and he holds them exactly that close; he still hears them in her voice. When it all feels like it might be too much, he remembers her words, and how much she loves him, and he remembers her face.

She makes it all seem just that much easier, just that much more bearable.

He doesn’t know what choices she would make but he trusts that he is the man she would want him to be, and he follows his heart.

-

When the war is over, Poe goes home to Yavin 4. He brings BB-8, and he hugs his father, and he sits up in the Force tree. _Maybe,_ he thinks, _maybe my children won’t have to fight a war. Maybe this will be a peace that lasts._ He thinks he understands better now what his parents sacrificed, what they strove to gain, how it must have felt to see it come to nothing when Poe went to fight anyway.

He holds the ring against his heart and knows that his mother is proud.

-

Poe doesn’t wear his mother’s ring anymore. It has been more than a decade since it fell into his palm, since his father told him his mother hoped he would find someone to give it to one day, since Poe started hoping for a love like his parents had.

Poe doesn’t wear the ring anymore because he found someone it belonged with.

_I’m happy,_ he thinks, as he looks up at the sky. _I’m so happy, Mom. Just like you wanted._

 


End file.
